


science (right down to it)

by lochTenderness (theseourbodies)



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Canon - Anime, F/F, Gen, Last Game - Freeform, Satsuki gets all fluttery when riko annotates her projections, harold - Freeform, nerd flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24425959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/lochTenderness
Summary: A few hours before the boys make it to the sports complex, Riko and Satsuki sit down in a café down the road to strategize.
Relationships: Aida Riko/Momoi Satsuki
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	science (right down to it)

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to [Interlude](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20422631), in which Kagami is about as subtle as Satsuki, only tragically less self aware.

Satsuki’s been watching the live feed on her phone, so she knows before Daiki calls her what he’s going to ask. She knows before she answers the phone what she’s going to say back. She receives three messages in quick succession from Riko before she can even accept Daiki’s call, and that’s good, too. She gets the feeling that even if she and Riko hadn’t been feeling out the boundaries of a new friendship all summer, Riko still would have reached out to her. There’s no one better at what Satsuki does than Satsuki herself. 

By the time Tetsu messages her with his own request, there’s nothing else to say but _yes, yes,_ and _when._

Her love of the sport and her friends not-withstanding, _no one_ gets to treat Imayoshi like that and live to talk trash about it. 

\------

A few hours before the boys make it to the sports complex, Riko and Satsuki sit down in a café down the road to strategize. 

Satsuki looks at the delicate little tables set up outside regretfully before she pulls Riko into the shop and over to the little booths washed in sunlight. Their waiter is young-ish and handsome-ish, shooting coy looks at Satsuki out of the corner of his eye when he hands them menus and asks if they would like drinks first. They would, and Satsuki orders for them both—water in tall glasses with lemon, to stay hydrated and invigorated; iced tea for Riko, for the caffeine; and a mango juice for Satsuki because she can’t stand the feel of cold tea against her teeth. Riko already has a pen stuck behind one ear; she’s worrying a pencil in her hands as she glares down at the rough outline of a training menu she had already written out by the time Satsuki met her outside.

Satsuki feels her heart beating calm and heavy in her chest, watching her. She feels a little bad for their waiter, who is working his angles very competently; any other time out with Riko, and Satsuki maybe would have leaned into it, if only to see the way Riko’s ears always went sweetly pink with something Satsuki was beginning to suspect wasn’t prudishness or jealousy. Or, at least not jealousy of _Satsuki._ But unfortunately for the boy, this is no nearly-date out with Riko; this is serious business, and Satsuki can’t be bothered to pretend she doesn’t notice his weak chin and the overdevelopment of his right wrist compared to his left. _Revenge porn,_ she notes distractedly, and resolves to snub him for the rest of the time she and Riko are here, to _really_ give him something to think about tonight. 

If Riko’s registered any of this, she doesn’t show it. “I think running drills would be a recipe for disaster,” Riko says, off-hand, and Satsuki almost laughs at the understatement. Besides the general differences in height, all of her friends and Kagamin boasted body types across a broad spectrum. Running synchronized drills of any kind would be something of a comedy act no matter what; trying to run drills as a warm-up would be even worse because everyone wouldn’t be able to get over first-time team up jitters. 

“But if they start scrimmaging right away, they may not all click,” Satsuki says, because it’s the truth and because it’s the feedback she knows Riko wants. They’ve never done this with one another, but it feels like a natural progression. It feels right, deep down. “They all have the potential and they’re feeling the drive right now; that’s enough for Ki-chan and Mukkun, right off the bat, and probably Tetsu-kun. The rest will be fired up to start, but if we lose them early on to squabbling, we might lose them for good unless Akashi-kun steps in.” And he would step in, is the problem—not to be malicious, or disruptive, but because even now that he was… recovered, he despised a power vacuum. 

“What if—what if we had them do their individual practices? I know they all keep their own training schedule, and then we could enforce limited drills to bring them together. Nothing strict—more like a warmup?” Riko writes a few notes on her plans. Satsuki reads _individual stamina gauge, ability balance, define subteams_ upside down and nods, pleased. 

“You’ll be able to see their individual strengths that way, and then we can start building lineups,” she says, tapping a finger over _ability balance._ Riko obligingly draws a whole bunch of crooked stars around the words. 

“Do you – Um. I--,” Riko breaks off suddenly and meets Satsuki’s eyes. “I’m not asking as the coach of a rival team,” she says lowly, her dark eyes very large and very serious. “But if you have anything—it’s not going to be telling me anything I don’t already know or anything I won’t be able to figure out as soon as I see them play together,” Riko says firmly, and Satsuki knows her well enough to know that it’s not bravado. Riko’s just that confident, and Satsuki’s confident, too. She knew, before Riko even messaged her, what she would be willing to do to make this work. 

“Anything you need,” Satsuki says with a grin, already reaching for her bag. Something, maybe the words or maybe Satsuki’s tone, makes Riko’s ears go a little pink after all, much to Satsuki’s delight. Satsuki’s still feeling rather smug about it by the time their waiter gets back to their table. She even decides to forgive him his choice of sex fantasy when he flushes a little when Riko looks up and smiles at him distractedly during a brief pause between browsing one file and the next.

“A-And would like anything to eat today?” he stammers, and Satsuki thinks, _Oh, fine,_ unwillingly charmed. Satsuki orders for them both again with only a second of hesitation, and sips at her juice when he trots off. Riko has questions eventually, usually about some of the more personal information, the things that Satsuki likes best but that she knows Riko doesn’t focus on. Most of the time, she just absorbs; Satsuki takes the opportunity to carefully watch Riko’s face, guessing at the information that she’s reading just by her expressions. Satsuki feels a warm glow in her chest, smug in a different way now. It’s been so long since she’s gotten to brag about the boys, even if it’s her data that’s doing the heavy lifting. It’s been so long since she’s really been able to talk about them, all of them all together, without something hard and spiny sticking in her throat. 

It’s even better to give all this information to Riko, to brag in this way to her. Riko doesn’t think like Satsuki, but she thinks along similar paths; she never questions that whatever information Satsuki has, it’s accurate, one-hundred-percent, and that’s—that’s the _best,_ like a drug. It’s like the zone that Daiki talks about, it’s like a Riko-and-Satsuki only zone where everything Satsuki says is just accepted and everything she gives away is appreciated. Even things that aren’t data, even things like her feelings, her instincts. Even Akashi hadn’t trusted the full scope of her information like Riko does. 

When they reach Tetsu’s file, and then Kagamin’s, Riko starts adding her own notes, her own data points. It’s a show of trust that makes Satsuki press her hands to her cheeks, feeling the sudden heat there. The boys trust her, obviously—or they did trust her, before she chose Daiki and Touou Academy. But that had been—it had just been the way they all were with one another. Even when they had stopped trusting Tetsu and they had stopped trusting one another, she had been exempt; she had been constant for all of them until they didn’t need her like before, but that was different. They’d still trusted her. 

Riko carefully annotates Satsuki’s predictions for Kagamin’s improvement with a smug smirk, and Satsuki has to focus very hard on her parfait. She tries not to fidget; her heart isn’t so calm in her chest anymore. 

Finally, Riko sits back against the booth with a happy groan, stretching her arms over her head, shaking out her shoulders and wrists. Their waiter, who had just decided it was safe to approach, chokes and promptly diverts to another table. Poor thing. 

“Aah, this was perfect,” Riko sighs, and her whole body looks invigorated. Satsuki can’t help but lean in and let Riko’s excitement be her excitement, too. 

“Ready to face the monsters?” Satsuki asks, teasing. 

Riko smiles, sharp but with no teeth. Satsuki feels it like a mouth at her throat all the same and can’t catch her breath around the feeling for a second. 

“No, they’re not the monsters anymore,” says Riko, and Satsuki feels something clench inside her that had nothing to do with Riko at all. 

“They’re the _sword._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> spent all of my last game rewatch obsessed with riko & momoi but all the cool shit they did was oFF SCREEN which was too tragic not to address.


End file.
